Most web-sites include a search engine facility in order to allow visitors to that site to execute searches in an attempt to locate items of interest. As web-sites have increasingly become the preferred means of communicating with clients, the owners of web-sites are particularly interested in ensuring that their web-site is user friendly and provides their clients with a positive experience.
Clients who are frustrated as a result of an experience with a web-site may develop a negative view of the entity that owns the site and in instances where the web-site provides the mechanism for a client to conduct transactions, such as locating and purchasing items for sale, the client may discontinue purchasing items due to the inability to quickly locate and purchase the desired item. Even for sites that only act to provide information to clients, such as web-sites for government departments, it is still important to the owner of the site to ensure that clients can locate the information that they require otherwise a negative impression will manifest itself in dissatisfaction with the entity that owns and/or operates the web-site.
A problem with web sites is that the effectiveness of the search engine cannot be tested. All search engine testing done to date is done manually via the browser and as a result, organisations become aware of problems with their search engine “after the fact”.
This usually occurs as a result of client feedback where a client has attempted to locate an item of information on a web-site and reports to the organisation their inability to locate that information. Of course, relying upon this approach to locate problems associated with missed content by the web-site search engine results in a negative perception in the mind of clients and does not provide a means to finding a solution. Further, after becoming aware of the missed content, it is necessary for the organisation to manually investigate and resolve the problem with the web-site search engine.
Currently, there is no automated way of executing search engine validation to ensure that the search engine provides full coverage of the information contained within a web-site (or set of linked web-sites). Further, there is no means by which one can check the coverage executed by a search engine. As indicated, the current solution is after the fact when client feedback is delivered to the search team (eg why couldn't I find document “a”?). The search engine is relied upon to deliver the results without any in depth understanding as to how the search engine indexed all of the web-site content. This is because the search engine can only validate what has been indexed and not what has been missed. Accordingly, the staff who work in search engine teams have no pro-active means by which to validate the coverage of their search engine.
The reference to any prior art in this specification should not be taken as an acknowledgment, or any form or suggestion that the prior art forms part of the common general knowledge at the priority date of the claims herein.